Automattic, the company behind blogging platform WordPress, announced Tuesday that it has acquired After the Deadline, a service that finds spelling and grammar errors in blog posts. The deal's terms were not disclosed.

After the Deadline's spelling-, grammar-, and style-checking tools are now available to 7.5 million WordPress blogs. It's also available as a downloadable plug-in for WordPress users.

Looking ahead, Automattic plans to make After the Deadline open-source. It hopes the community will play a part in improving it. After the Deadline's founder Raphael Mudge, will stay on at Automattic to deliver After the Deadline to non-English-speaking bloggers.

After the Deadline was first discovered by the Automattic team when WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg saw a comment on Hackernews from After the Deadline's founder discussing how his tool found errors in a New York Times article. He was intrigued and contacted the tool's founder. Just a few months later, After the Deadline is now a part of WordPress.

I've had the opportunity to use After the Deadline on a few occasions. (You can too by inputting content into its demonstration module.) It's one of the most capable error-correction tools I've ever used.

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Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has covered everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Besides his work with CNET, Don's work has been featured in a variety of other publications including PC World and a host of Ziff-Davis publications.
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